JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

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Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
penalty for adultery. This redaction apparently sought to bring
syntactical uniformity to the penal clauses of the tradition. As a result of
Hushaym’s redaction of Shuʿba’s original tradition, clauses 3a and 3b
had come to rely on three longer locutions (nafy u sanat in on one occasion
and jald u miʾat in on two occasions) followed by a single word (al-rajm).
Al-Qaṭṭān substituted the compound locution ramy un bi-l-ḥijāra for alrajm.
Thus, he sacrificed the terminological expression in order to meet
the recipient’s expectation of a compound concluding clause. Unlike al-
Qaṭṭān, Wakīʿ preferred to restore Hushaym’s wording, but at the same
time chose to rely on an alternative isnād circumventing the two earliest
authorities in Hushaym’s transmission line.
Notwithstanding the interventions that al-Qaṭṭān and Wakīʿ
undertook, the base legal requirements in ʿUbāda tradition had acquired
their final shape already in the second quarter of the second century AH.
The penal part of the matn insisted on a dual penalty for adultery and
fornication. The introductory exclamation by the Prophet clearly referred
to Qurʾān 4:15 the ordinance of which the tradition sought to emendate.
Although such an intertextual relationship signals the tradition’s
dependence on scripture, none of the variants that we considered so far
portrays the prophetic dictum as a divinely revealed ordinance.
At this point, one faces the question about the existence of an even
earlier disseminator of the ʿUbāda tradition as suggested in Juynboll’s
analysis. To check this hypothesis, I have compiled a combined diagram
of the hitherto revealed (P)CLs in the ʿUbāda non-revelation cluster
(Diagram 4, p. 190). The isnād chart shows two (P)CLs, Shuʿba b. al-
Ḥajjāj and Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān, converging on Qatāda b. Diʿāma as
their common informant. Thus, by the evidence of the isnāds Qatāda
looks as an older (P)CL who may have received the tradition from al-
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. This hypothesis finds additional support in the isnād of
yet another (P)CL, Hushaym b. Bashīr who draws his line of
transmission via al-Ḥasan. Wakīʿ’s irregular isnād is of little
corroborative force on its own, but if taken in conjunction with the
existence of an attested PCL (Qatāda b. Diʿāma), it may be cautiously
interpreted as bespeaking al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s contribution to the
circulation of the ʿUbāda non-revelation tradition. Inevitably, this would
push the tradition’s history back to the second half of the first century
AH.
The above optimistic scenario, however, must be tempered with
important qualifications. While Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj may be assumed to
have faithfully named Qatāda b. Diʿāma as his direct informant, Yaḥyā
b. Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān does not quote Qatāda directly, but through the agency